Email marketing is a powerful tool for connecting with your audience, driving sales and building long-term relationships. Despite the rise of social media and other digital marketing channels, email continues to thrive. But why do people click on emails in the first place? What sets your email apart from the sea of spam? And why is email marketing still so important?
Why email marketing still works
The power of the inbox
Email is a direct line of communication. Unlike social media channels such as Instagram, LinkedIn, or X, email goes right into your customers’ inbox. This gives your company the unique opportunity to grab the reader’s attention. With email marketing, you have more control on reaching your audience. You are not beholden to social media algorithms (though you may complete with spam filters, more on that below).
One challenge of email marketing is getting people to click on your email. Let’s dig into how to get your readers to open and engage with your emails.
7 ways to boost email engagement
1. Create a compelling subject line
An email subject line is your readers’ first impression. It determines whether or not the recipient will open your email and that means it’s crucial to make the subject line count. Here are three ways to improve your email subject line:
- Keep it short and sweet: Keep your subject line concise, but also informative. A good rule of thumb is to keep the subject line to 50 characters or less.
- Personalize the content: No two email subscribers are the same. Personalizing subject lines can make a reader pause and take action. It’s more relevant to them and less likely to be seen as spam.
- Be smart with keywords: Keywords in an email, especially the subject line of an email, are very important. However, if a brand uses too many keywords your email begins to look like spam. Keywords to avoid include ‘free’, ‘$$$’, ‘guaranteed’, ‘earn’, etc.
2. Understand timing
Sending an email at the right time can significantly improve your open rates. Over a million email marketing campaigns sent through MailerLite were analyzed to determine the following top days and hours for open rates:
- Thursday sees the highest email open rate, closely followed by Monday. In the middle of the week, your email subscribers are settled into their work routine and consistently checking their inboxes. Lots of email marketers believe that mid-week emails will provide higher engagement.
- Most email opens occur between 11AM-12PM, with another peak between 6-7PM. These times could be considered prime sending windows as your subscribers have settled into their day, but are not yet too focused on their daily tasks to ignore their inboxes.
3. Keep it mobile-friendly
With over half of emails being opened on mobile devices, responsive design isn’t optional. It’s the norm. Make sure that your emails:
- Load quickly: This can be done by reducing file sizes and optimizing images.
- Are readable: Large (but not too large!) fonts are good for a ‘readable’ email. Clear and concise emails are just as effective.
- Are clickable: It is always a good idea to make sure the buttons and links are easily clickable on any type of screen.
- Responsive: Emails should be responsive to the different types of devices users may read them on. Emails should be just as easily readable on a phone as they are on a laptop and so on.
4. Focus on content length
The length of your email can, and most likely will, affect its readability and engagement. Aiming for brevity and scan-ability is a best practice. Keep your messages short and informative. Using bullet points, subheadings or smaller paragraphs makes it easy to scan.
5. Find a strong CTA (call to action)
A call to action (or CTA) is a part of an email that invites the reader to take action. Using words and phrases like “download”, “sign up”, or “see examples” can compel a user to engage deeper with the content. Avoid having too many CTAs in one email as that can overwhelm or confuse a reader. Place your CTA where it will stand out and be easy to click.
6. Segment your audience
Targeted and relevant emails are important! Every person on your company’s email list is different. Consider segmenting your emails by:
- Demographics: This could be age, location, gender, etc.
- Behavior: Which of your subscribers are the more responsive? Segment by past purchases, prior email engagement or website activity.
- Preferences: Does your company have a feature that collects interests or preferences during sign-ups or surveys? Try utilizing those to segment your audiences and email messaging.
7. Test and analyze
Continue to check, test and analyze your emails. Use A/B testing, user feedback and surveys to understand the success of your emails.
For example, when A/B testing, send the same email to two different groups of users but change the subject line in each. Or, change the CTA in the body of the email. The important thing about A/B testing is not to change too much at one time. Choose one thing to change and see how that performs to each segment of your audience. Use that information to your advantage the next time you send an email campaign.
You could test different subject lines, send times or even the order in which the content is displayed to find what works best for top email engagement with your audiences.
Don’t be afraid to ask your readers for feedback. Of course the data on your email open rates and click-throughs can help, but your audience may also be open to providing feedback. Use audience surveys to ask about the type of content that is helpful, the time of day they prefer to be emailed, how often they prefer to hear from you, etc. Outreach like this can help build strong relationship with your consumers and, in turn, generates more engagement.
Putting engagement strategies into practice
Email marketing is a cornerstone of digital marketing. Take time to focus on strategies that enhance engagement. Successful email marketing is not just sending a bunch of emails, but sending quality emails with engaging content.
